


Domination

by undercovercaptain



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1960s, F/M, I made Stannis full on Russian, Inspired by The Queen's Gambit, May add more to this..., Orphan Sansa, Petyr being a bit of a letch, Sansa as a chess prodigy, Swinging London, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:07:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27712492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undercovercaptain/pseuds/undercovercaptain
Summary: Even as she had followed along behind Petyr, half-listening to his hushed homilies, she kept glancing in his direction, adding up the impressions recorded by each glance. She was excited by his towering talent, intrigued by his stoic composure. The prospect of playing against him stimulated and thrilled her. But at the same time, she felt a vague disquiet.
Relationships: Stannis Baratheon/Sansa Stark
Comments: 23
Kudos: 65





	Domination

**Author's Note:**

> Got inspired by watching The Queen's Gambit on Netflix and couldn't resist writing this. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own anything, just playing around in the sandbox.

**Domination**

_When a piece has a relatively wide choice of destination squares, but nevertheless cannot avoid being captured._

Sansa remembered staring at the players’ bulletin for a full minute. She had not known he would be at this tournament. For some reason, she had not anticipated it. She had already received her board assignment in the post weeks ago: it was Board Nine. He could only be Board One.

The competition at this tournament was more consistent, vigorous, and professional than anything she had seen before. It was nothing like the musty town halls and tired recreation centres of her try-out days, just finding her competition feet, where fussy mathematics teachers, boys in mouth-braces and bespectacled accountants all crumbled and fell away in the wake of her prodigious talent.

On the corner of Sloane Street and Cadogan Place, the Carlton Tower was unlike anywhere she had ever been to, let alone stayed at. Built only a handful of years prior in ’61, it was said to be the tallest hotel in London, let alone Knightsbridge. From grey pavement slabs it rose up proudly, slick-lined, and geometric, its many shining suite windows glinting throughout the bustling metropolitan nights. To her young eyes it all seemed so astounding, from the oak bar with its granite inlay, to the bright mosaic-like carpets that covered the corridors and wound up the stairs. And he was there. Somewhere, however many floors above or below her, he was there. The champion of champions.

Sitting now on a straight, plush-seated chair in front of a long table of chessboards in the grand ballroom, she felt irritated with herself and bit dizzy. She had not slept a great deal the night before. She had been woken by Robert’s whimpering and whining for home, for Eyrie House, for his mother and stepfather’s full attention, without hesitation, without distraction. She wished she could give it to him, wished she could turn away their notice from her onto him. She wished she could extricate herself from Uncle Petyr’s fixed and ever watchful stare, from the pursing of Aunt Lysa’s painted lips whenever she caught him. She wished she could shrink away and disappear from the envious, yet oblivious comments that always seemed to follow. Always at her, but never at him. As if she were the one to blame for his looking. But she could not think about such things now.

She had just opened with a pawn to king four. Her clock was ticking. She could control this. She could _win_ this. Right now, everything beyond the mirrored ballroom walls ceased to matter. She put aside all other thoughts and played pawn to queen’s bishop four, trusting the formal manoeuvres of the Sicilian to keep her steady until she got into the game. Her opponent, a round-faced, heavy-set Englishman with too much Brylcreem in his hair, brought the king’s knight out with civil orthodoxy. Sansa pushed the queen pawn to the fourth rank; he exchanged pawns. She began to relax as her mind moved away from her body, away from the twisted, depressive mire of her thoughts, and onto the tableau of forces in front of her.

By half past eleven, she had him down by two pawns, and just past noon he resigned. They had got nowhere close to an endgame; when the Englishman, Tarly he was called, stood up and offered her his clammy hand, the board was still massed with uncaptured pieces.

She met Petyr’s eyes from a little distance away. She wished the game had lasted longer.

“Resigned after thirty moves.” He sounded pleased as she came up beside him. “Well done.”

“Thank you, but he was no real threat,” she answered, almost curtly.

Now that the game was over, her former anxiety seemed to rush back up to the surface of her thoughts, flapping away like sitting ducks, and made worse by her uncle’s insinuating, intrusive presence. Next to her, his smile twitched, grey-green eyes narrowing marginally.

“Of course,” he said, hand reaching across to settle on the small of her back, as they slipped through a large pair of gleaming oak doors, into the hotel’s lobby. “No match for my bright girl.”

She tensed slightly. The persistent heat and pressure from his palm made her want to step away, yet her feet remained in step with his. Petyr had bought the dress that she was wearing: a cream and navy jersey mini by Mary Quant, athletic and young, distinct amidst a sea of sober-suited competitors and hotel visitors. It seemed like nearly everything she owned had been bought by him, at one time or another, and if not directly, then by his money, pressed into her uneasy hands, in exchange for a kiss on the cheek and a _don’t tell your aunt._ It didn’t matter if she wanted to step away, where else could she go? He owned so much of her.

The top three boards were in a separate room across the lobby from the grand ballroom. Sansa had glanced at it that morning while rushing, five minutes late, to the place where she was to play, but she had not stopped to look in. She walked distractedly towards it now, Petyr’s touch suddenly falling away, into the carpeted room with its rows of players bent over boards—players from elsewhere in Britain, from America and West Germany, from Iceland and Norway, Bulgaria and Greece, most of them young, almost all of them male. It was a smoothy run affair, hushed and focused, but Sansa did not stop to look at any of the positions.

Back out in the hallway, a little further down, several people were standing outside a smaller game room. Petyr tried to catch her arm, impatient, but she slipped past him again, pushing past the little crowd into the open doorway. There, across the room from her at Board One, wearing a dark suit and a grim scowl, was the Russian, Stanislav Baranov, his dark, expressionless eyes on the game in front of him. A respectfully silent crowd stood between her and him. Behind him on the wall was a display chessboard with adhesive plastic pieces; his opponent, an Icelander, Sigorn Styrsson, was just moving one of the white knights into its new position as Sansa came in. She studied the board for a moment. Everything was very tight, but the Russian seemed to have an edge.

She looked back at Baranov and then quickly looked away. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest. His face was alarming in its concentration. She turned and left abruptly, walking slowly along the hall.

The day before, they had taken the train from Knightsbridge Station, on the Piccadilly line towards Cockfosters, getting off at Leicester Square. From there it had been a short walk to Trafalgar Square; the sky overcast and the grey-feathered pigeons cooing between the burbling fountains and regal bronze lions, Nelson ever watchful from high up on his column. The whole way there she had held Robert’s little hand, both cast under the spell of poppy red double-deckers and towering, stately architecture, cast quieter still by the break in the clouds shining through the glass dome of the National Gallery’s staircase hall, lighting up the marble floor beneath their feet.

It was in one of the many gallery rooms that she first saw him. A real man, not just a stark, black name on the players’ bulletin board, no longer just a photograph on the over-thumbed cover of British Chess Magazine. He was tall—taller than she expected—sinewy and broad shouldered, with a heavy brow, black hair that was receding slightly, and a deeply impassive look.

Sansa had stiffened at the sight of him, Robert tugging impatiently at her hand. She remembered her cheeks flushing. The man was Stanislav Baranov, Chess Champion of the World. There had been no mistaking the grim Russian face, the authoritarian scowl. She had seen it staring back at her in BCM so many times, once with the same black suit and thin black tie, she was sure of it. Standing there in the high-ceiled gallery room, she had not been able to look away from him, letting Robert slip, disgruntled, out of her lax hand, flouncing off to his mother for attention.

Even as she had followed along behind Petyr, half-listening to his hushed homilies, she kept glancing in his direction, adding up the impressions recorded by each glance. She was excited by his towering talent, intrigued by his stoic composure. The prospect of playing against him stimulated and thrilled her. But at the same time, she felt a vague disquiet.

Petyr had noticed her preoccupation, pausing in his lecture. His eyes had followed hers, turning to fall upon the tall figure of Baranov—his arm was linked with a darkly dressed woman, high up above the elbow, and yet there was a lack of intimacy in their appearance, a caustic chill in the woman’s profile, which made them seem two separate people rather than a couple. The woman had then slipped away, walking over to a small girl, dressed just as austerely, leaving Baranov to stand alone.

He had been staring intently at _The Ambassadors_ , almost as though he was waiting for one of them to suddenly produce a board and move a pawn. From where Sansa had stood, watching, looking, the central skull had flattened out some, gazing emptily back at her, until at last she turned away.

“ _Sansa_.”

The harshness of Petyr’s voice dragged her away from Baranov, away from the skull and _The Ambassadors_ , out of her memory, and back into the hotel hallway.

“He’s just a piece, my darling,” he said, moving round to face her, lacking any hesitance as he reached up to take her flushed cheeks between his too soft, too warm palms. “He’s just a piece, just like all the rest.”

* * *

Everything was hushed. In her game the next day she played the Queen’s Gambit Declined against an Austrian named Lancel, a sandy-haired, aesthetic young man in a sleeveless sweater, and she forced him to resign in midgame with a relentless pressure in the centre of the board. She did it mostly with pawns and was herself quietly amazed at the intricacies that seemed to flow from her fingertips as she took the centre of the board and began to crush his position as one might crush as egg. He had played well, made no blunders or anything that could properly be called a mistake, but Sansa moved with such deadly accuracy, such measured control, that his position was hopeless by the twenty-third move.

Her afternoon game was with a Chilean in his mid to late thirties, with eyes as sharp and dark as a viper’s. Sansa had the black pieces, played the Sicilian and caught him off-guard on the nineteenth move. Then she began wearing him down. Her head was very clear, and she was able to keep him so busy trying to answer her threats that she was eventually able to pick off a bishop in exchange for two pawns and drive his king out. The Chilean then stood up, smiled at her coldly, and said, “Enough. Enough.” He shook his head angrily. “I resign the game.”

For a moment she was furious, wanting to finish, to drive his king across the board and checkmate it.

“You play a game that is… _fearsome_ ,” the Chilean said. “You make a man feel helpless.” He bowed slightly, his formality surprising her, then turned and left the table.

She did not wait to meet Petyr’s expectant gaze, or for his hand to find the small of her back, instead she stalked past him, out of the game room towards the registration desk. On the bulletin board was the list players; Sansa had not looked at it again properly for several days. Now she stopped and checked the scores, waiting patiently as a tournament attendant carefully amended it. They were listed in order of their international ratings, and Baranov was at the top with 2715. Stark was seventeenth with 2370. After each player’s name was a series of boxes showing their score for the rounds. 0 meant a loss, ½ a draw, and 1 a win. There were a great many ½’s. Three names had an uninterrupted string of 1’s after them; Baranov and Stark were two of these.

The pairings were a few feet to the right. At the top of the list was BARANOV–GREYJOY, and below that STARK–CORBRAY. If she and Baranov both won today, they would not necessarily play each other in the final game tomorrow. She was not sure whether she wanted to play him or not. Something had changed now that she had seen him play, even if just from a distance.

Back in the ballroom, a buzz of voices had begun as players found their boards, set up their clocks, settled into preparations for play. Sansa shook off her unease as well as she could and found Board Four—the first board in the big room—and waited for Corbray.

A thin, vainly handsome man, Corbray was by no means easy, and the game lasted four hours before he was forced to resign. Yet at no point during all that time did she ever lose her edge—the tiny advantage that the opening move gives to the player of the white pieces. Corbray did not say anything, but she could tell from the way he stalked off afterwards that he was furious at being beaten by a woman. A _girl_. She had seen it often enough before to recognise it. Usually it made her angry, but right now it did not matter. She had something else on her mind.

Again, she dodged Petyr’s questing hand, instead walking past him to investigate the smaller room where Baranov played, but it was empty. The winning position—Baranov’s—was still displayed on the big board on the wall; it was as devastating as Sansa’s win over Corbray had been.

“He’s a tough one to beat.” Petyr’s voice brushed up against her ear, the unwanted hand finally settling on the small of her back, guiding her away, taking control of her once more. “Tough, but not impossible…”

At the registration desk, they looked at the bulletin board. Some of tomorrow’s pairings were already up. That was a surprise. She stepped closer to look, and her heart caught in her throat; at the top of the finals list in black printed letters was BARANOV–STARK. She blinked and read it again, holding her breath. Tomorrow, she would play the Russian.

* * *

Sansa had brought three books with her to London. She and Robert ate dinner in their room, and afterwards she took out Grandmaster Games; in it were five of Baranov’s. She opened it to the first one and began to play through it, unfurling her roll-up board and pieces onto the polished, walnut coffee-table. She seldom did this, generally relying on her ability to visualise a game when going over it, but she wanted to have Baranov in front of her as palpably as possible.

Robert lay in the bed dosing, uncharacteristically quiet, too full of Chicken à la King and lemon chiffon pie, while Sansa played through the games, looking for weaknesses. She found none.

She played through them again, stopping in certain positions where the possibilities seemed nearly infinite, and working them all out. She sat staring at the board with everything in her present life obliterated from her attention while the combinations played themselves out in her head. Every now and then a sound from Robert, or a tension in the air of the room, brought her out of it for a moment, and she looked around dazedly, feeling the pained tightness of her muscles and then the thin, intrusive edge of fear swell in her stomach.

There had been a few times over the past year when she felt like this, with her mind not only dizzied but nearly terrified by the endlessness of chess. By midnight, Robert was fast asleep. Sansa sat, hunched forward, for hours, not hearing his gentle snores, not sensing the faint leather smell of the rosewood Eames chair, feeling somehow that she might fall from its precipice, that sitting over the chessboard she had bought so long ago, at Woolworths in Harrogate, she was actually poised over an abyss, sustained there only by the bizarre mental equipment that had fitted her for this elegant yet deadly game. On the board there was danger everywhere. A person could not rest.

She did not go to bed until sometime after four and, asleep, she dreamt of drowning.

* * *

A few people had gathered in the ballroom, their figures reflected and multiplied by its mirrored walls. She recognised Tarly, round face and ruddy, dressed smartly in a brown suit and tie; he waved bashfully at her as she came in, and she forced herself to smile in his direction. It was frightening to see even this player she had already beaten. She was jumpy, knew she was jumpy, and did not know what to do about it.

She had showered at seven that morning, unable to rid herself of the tension she had awakened with. She was barely able to get down her morning tea in one of the many, near-empty restaurant rooms, and had washed her face afterwards, carefully, trying to focus herself. Now she crossed the ballroom’s polished floor and went to the ladies’ room and washed her face again. She dried it with paper towels and combed her hair deftly—a pert, flipped shoulder length bob with an eye-lash grazing fringe—watching herself, wide-eyed, in the big mirror. Her pale green and white houndstooth set suddenly looked ill-chosen, suited to another girl. Someone with poise; her movements forced, and her body impossibly fragile.

In the mirror her fear stared ominously back at her, sharp as a toothache.

It was as she came down the hallway to meet Petyr that she saw him. He was standing there solidly with four men she did not recognise. All of them wore dark suits. Two of them, plus Baranov, were standing close together, talking softly, confidentially. The other two stood slightly further back, but still near. Sansa lowered her eyes and walked past them.

“Number two and three,” Petyr murmured; he was leaning against the wall, waiting for her approach. At her furrowed brow, he lifted his chin in the men’s direction.

Sansa bristled in understanding. “And the other two?”

He pushed off the wall, taking a step towards her. He bent slightly to whisper in her ear: “KGB.” He paused. “So he won’t _leave_.” She heard more than saw his shrewd smile. “Come along now, darling.”

Petyr took her then by the arm, the heat from his palm seeping through her sleeve as he led her into the smaller game room. Some men were waiting there with cameras. Reporters. With a shaky breath, Sansa broke free from her uncle, slipping behind the black pieces at Board One. She stared at the board for a moment, heard the tournament director’s clipped voice saying, “Play will begin in five minutes,” and looked up.

Baranov was walking across the room towards her. His suit fit him well— _very well_ —with the trouser legs draping neatly above the tops of his shined black shoes. Sansa felt herself flush and turned her eyes back to the board, embarrassed, feeling awkward. Baranov stood over her, and it took her half a beat to realise that his hand was outstretched, waiting. Mustering her courage, she placed her hand in his, felt for a moment the slightly roughened skin—not soft like Petyr’s—and the strength, the deftness, beneath the bone. But then the touch was gone.

Baranov seated himself. She then heard the director’s voice as if from a great distance, “You may start your opponent’s clock,” and she reached out, pressed the button on the clock and looked up. He was sitting there solid, dark, and grim, looking fixedly at the board. She watched, as if in a dream, as he reached out his long-fingered, broad-palmed hand, to pick up the king pawn and set it on the fourth rank. Pawn to king four.

She followed his hand as it retreated, saw the glint of a silver watch beneath his turned-out cuff, then focused back on the board. She stared at it for a moment. She always played the Sicilian to that opening—the most common opening for White in the game of chess. But she hesitated. She remembered that Baranov had been called the “Master of the Sicilian” somewhere in a journal or magazine. Almost impulsively, she played pawn to king four herself, hoping to play him on ground that was fresh for them both, a play that would not give him the advantage of superior knowledge. He brought out his king’s knight to bishop three, and she brought hers to queen bishop three, protecting the pawn. And then without hesitation, he played his bishop to knight five and her heart sank. The Ruy Lopez. She had played it often enough, but in this game, it frightened her. It was as complex, as thoroughly analysed, as the Sicilian, and there were dozens of lines she hardly knew, except for memorising them from books.

Close to them, someone flashed a bulb for a picture, and she heard the tournament director’s angry whisper not to disturb the players. Sansa pushed her pawn up to rook three, to attack the bishop. Baranov pulled it back to rook four, his hand strangely beautiful and elegant in its movement. She forced herself to concentrate, brought out her other knight, and Baranov castled. All this was familiar, but it was no relief. She now had to decide to play either the open variation or the closed. She glanced up at Baranov’s face; she had thought that his eyes were brown at first, when she had only seen his from a distance, but was now surprised to see that they were actually a very dark blue.

Releasing a quiet breath, she looked back down at the board. She took his pawn with her knight, starting the open. He played pawn to queen four, as she knew he would, and she played pawn to queen knight four because she had to, so she would be ready when he moved the rook.

The chandelier overhead was too bright. And now she began to feel dismay, as though the rest of the game were inevitable—as though she were locked into some choreography of feints and counterthreats, there in the hotel’s ballroom, in which it was a fixed necessity that she lose, like a game from a book where you knew the outcome and played it only to see how it happened.

She shook her head to clear it. The game had not gone that far. They were still playing out tired old moves and the only advantage White had was the advantage White always had—the first move. Petyr had said that when computers really learned to play chess and played against one another, White would always win because of that first move. Like noughts and crosses. But it hadn’t come to that. She was not playing against a perfect machine. _He’s just a piece, just like all the rest._

Baranov brought his bishop back to knight three, retreating. She played pawn to queen four, and he took the pawn, and she brought her bishop to king three. She had known this much back at Vale Academy; from the lines she had secretly memorised during geography class from Modern Chess Openings. But the game was ready now to enter a wide-open phase, where it could take unexpected turns. She looked up just as Baranov, his face smooth and impassive, picked up his queen and set it down in front of the king, on king two. She blinked at it for a moment. What was he doing? Going after the knight on her king five? He could pin the pawn that protected the knight easily enough with a rook. But the move looked somehow suspicious. She felt the tightness in her stomach again, a touch of dizziness.

Folding her arms across her chest, Sansa began to study the position. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the young man who moved the pieces on the display board placing the big white queen on the king two square. She glanced out into the room. There were about a dozen people standing there watching. She caught Petyr’s gaze, always watching her, and turned back to the board. She would have to get rid of her bishop. Knight to rook four looked good for that. There was also knight to bishop four or bishop to king two, but that was more complicated. She studied the possibilities for a moment and discarded the idea. She did not trust herself against Baranov with those complications. To put a knight on the rook file cuts its range in half; but she did it. She had to get rid of the bishop. The bishop was trouble.

Baranov reached down without pause and played knight to queen four. She stared at it; she had expected him to move his rook. Still, there seemed to be no harm in it. Pushing her queen bishop pawn up to the fourth square looked good. It would force Baranov’s knight to take her bishop, and after that she could take his bishop with her knight and stop the maddening pressure on her other knight, the one that sat a bit too far down the board on king five and didn’t have enough flight squares for comfort. Against Baranov, the loss of a knight would be lethal. She played the queen bishop pawn, holding the piece for a moment between her fingers before letting it go. Then she sat a bit further back in her chair and drew and deep breath. The position looked good.

Without wavering, Baranov took the bishop with his knight, and Sansa retook with her pawn. Then he played his queen bishop pawn to the third rank, as she thought he might, creating a place for the troublesome bishop to hide. She took the bishop with relief, getting rid of it and getting her knight off the embarrassing rook file. Baranov remained impassive, unmoved, taking the knight with his pawn, hand like a pianist’s. His dark eyes flicked up to hers and then back to the position.

Sansa looked down nervously. It had looked good a few moves before; it did not look so good now. The problem was her knight on king five. He could move his queen to knight four, threatening to take her king’s pawn with check, and when she protected against this, he could attack the knight with his king bishop pawn, and it would have no place to go. Baranov’s queen would be there to take it. There was another annoyance on her queen side: he could play rook takes pawn, giving up the rook to hers, only to get it back with a queen check, coming out a pawn ahead and with an improved position. No. Two pawns ahead. She would have to put her queen on knight three. Queen to queen two was no good because of his damned bishop pawn that could attack her knight.

She did not like this defensiveness and studied the board for a long time before moving, trying to find something that would counterattack. There was nothing. She had to move the queen and protect the knight. She felt her cheeks burning and studied the position again. Nothing. She brought her queen to knight three and did not look at Baranov.

With no hesitation whatsoever, Baranov brought his bishop to king three, protecting his king. Why hadn’t she seen that? She had looked long enough. Now if she pushed the pawn she had planned to push, she would lose her queen. How could she have missed it? Her palms began to itch. She had planned the threat of discovered check with the new position of her queen, and he had parried it instantly with a move that was chillingly obvious. Sansa gave in and glanced up at him, at his well-shaven, imperturbable Russian face with the tie so finely knotted beneath his marble-cut chin, and the fear she felt almost froze her muscles.

She studied the board with as much intensity as she could muster, sitting rigidly for twenty minutes staring at the position. Her stomach sank even further as she tried and rejected a dozen continuations. She could not save the knight. Finally, she played her bishop to king two, and Baranov predictably put his queen on knight four, threatening again to win the knight by pushing up his king bishop pawn. Now she had the choice of king to queen two or of castling. Either way the knight was lost. She castled.

Baranov immediately moved the bishop pawn to attack her knight. She could have screamed. Everything he was doing was obvious, unimaginative, bureaucratic. His precision was lethal. She felt stifled and played pawn to queen five, attacking his bishop, and then watched his inevitable moving of the bishop to rook six, threatening to mate. She would have to bring her rook up to protect. He would take the knight with his queen, and if she took the bishop, the queen would pick off the rook in the corner with a check, and the whole thing would blow apart. She would have to bring the rook over to protect it. And meanwhile she was down a knight. Against the world’s champion, whose shirt was impeccably white, so beautifully fitted, whose tie was superbly tied, whose shadowy Russian face admitted no doubt, no weakness, only resolve.

She saw her hand reach out, taking the black king by its head, to topple it onto the board.

She sat there for a moment and heard the applause. _His_ applause, not hers. Then, looking at no one, not even Petyr, she fled the room.

* * *

The Rib Room apparently had a reputation for being a little bit flash and a little bit louche, finding redemption only in the most basic virtues: prawn cocktails, ribs of Aberdeen Angus beef, gin Gimlets, and so on. The truth was her uncle liked a good dinner, even when commiserating. He lit his first cigarette, a Balkan and Turkish mixture made for him by Morlands of Grosvenor Street. The smell made her nose itch. Petyr offered one to her aunt, examining his own for a moment, as though acknowledging his own taste, then continued to smoke it appreciatively and without affectation, drawing the smoke deeply into his lungs with a little sigh, and then exhaling it casually through his lips and nostrils. He slid his barely sipped coup in her direction, his movements economical and precise, with no trace of self-consciousness.

“If you’re going to lose, it’s better to be Black.” He inhaled another thick lungful of smoke.

“Does White always win?”

Petyr smiled back tightly at his wife, blowing out the smoke. “White begins,” he replied, as if explaining to a child; “It has the advantage.”

Sansa remained silent. It took the whole glass to even begin to make the pain in her stomach go away, to blur the fury and shame. Even when it started to ease, she could still see Baranov’s dark, looming face and could feel the frustration she had felt during the match. She had played like a novice, like a passive, embarrassed fool. And she had run.

Beneath the low, hazy lights of the hotel restaurant, men in dark tailored suits were drinking inexhaustible quarter-bottles of champagne, and the high-heeled women dry martinis. Across from her, Lysa lifted a shining fork to her prawn cocktail; plump juicy prawns, Marie Rose sauce and crunchy cos lettuce, not to mention a good helping of caviar on top. She looked like her mother, though never as lovely, never as kind. Sansa used to think her aunt careless, ignorant, but now she knew she cared about things a great deal, just perhaps not what one should care about. She watched Lysa as she turned to her husband, watched her simper and palm at his expensive jacket, talking about the food, or the alcohol, or tea at Claridge’s. None of it mattered.

Petyr caught her gaze and turned it back on her, looking at her with unmasked intensity, heated despite the disappointment of her loss. Her stomach sank even further. His gin bitter on her tongue.

“Excuse me,” she whispered, choked.

As she rose from her seat, Robert whined petulantly, slight body too small in his large chair, wanting her to stay. But she could not. She had to get out. She had to leave.

The endless carpets stretched out beneath her feet, geometric and modernist, travelling up the staircases as she quickened her pace. Absently, she knew she was heading for hers and Robert’s room, but her hair was in her eyes, covering up the tears, and she did not know where she was going. When she turned at the top of another set of stairs, she heard the lift-door ding and open. Then large hands against her slim shoulders, as she crashed into a man’s broad chest, followed by a cool, accented voice:

“Good evening,” he said, and her head snapped up.

It was him.

Stanislav Baranov looked down at her, his face impassive, as ever. His hands on her shoulders were heavy, but strangely not unwelcome. She almost wanted to bury her face in his perfect white shirt, to crease it beneath her fingers, to cry into the arms of this damned man who had made her feel so small, so insignificant. Shaking her head, she took a step back. In answer, he blinked, and his hands fell away instantly. He was so tall, so unlike Petyr. And yet like Petyr, his stare unsettled her—not in the same way, but in the same measure. How deep inside of her could he see?

She stood before him stoically now, the hallway empty, the wall lamps bright and glowing.

“You play good.”

The English stuck slightly, unnaturally in his throat. He sounded almost as though he pitied her.

She felt herself flush hotly. “But not good _enough._ ”

“No,” he agreed, the word falling lightly in his mouth. His eyes, dark blue and not brown, flitted across her face for a moment, his impassivity, imperceptibly, cracking. “Not yet.”

Then he moved to walk stiffly past her, leaving Sansa alone in the hallway.

The room she shared with Robert was still empty by the time she reached it. As if in a daze, she went to the bathroom, the tiled floor cold beneath her bare feet. She ran a bath, as hot as she could stand. Slipping in, she closed her eyes. She waited, for what she did not know. To be caught?

She slid her fingers between her legs. She started to stir herself, trying to think about something, _anything_ , other than him. But her thoughts still went where they willed. At first, she made it very slow. That way it would be better, because she wanted to remember, to recount every single thing—the solid warmth beneath his cool shirt as she pressed, for a moment, into him, the hands holding her shoulders, how it felt. She wanted to remember the way he looked, his dark eyes assessing her, the cut of his jaw and the broad pianist’s hands—not just want, but an onrushing force—an energy so powerful she had no words for it, but knew it, could almost relive it, not wanting it to end.

Beneath the steaming water, she traded her hand for his, exchanged the delicate for the deft. With her eyes screwed shut, she imagined his voice, clear as vodka, melting like ice, brushing against her ear, his lips against her neck. Muffling her gasps, she played herself as he had played her, slow, and then picking up the pace. Then, in a rush, devasting her completely.

Afterwards, she wallowed in the tub in a drifting trance, until the water grew cool and she was driven to clamber out, stiff, with shrivelled hands. She rubbed herself dry, feeling now both calm and jumpy—an alert excitement, the first cousin to fear, thinking, _I shouldn’t have done that...but I liked it._ Singing softly to herself:

_Bang-bang, he shot me down,_

_Bang-bang, I hit the ground,_

_Bang-bang, that awful sound,_

_Bang-bang, my baby shot me down_

**Author's Note:**

> So yes, I changed Stannis Baratheon to Stanislav Baranov...apologies to any Russians if that's a dumb name, lol. I just wrote this as a long one-shot, but might add to it at some point... Hope you guys liked it!
> 
> Nerdy Side Notes:
> 
> – I know absolutely nothing about how you play chess, so I really owe a lot to the book, The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis, for having such detailed outlines of each game played. I just adapted them, adding extra details here and there, to fit in with this fic's characters.  
> – The Carlton Tower is a real hotel in London (now called the Jumeirah Carlton Tower), which first opened in 1961, along with the restaurant the Rib Room. At the time, it really was the tallest hotel in London, and in the 60s, the Rib Room declared their ambition to serve the best beef in the city.  
> – British Chess Magazine is a real thing, and is the world's oldest chess journal in continuous publication. First published in January 1881, it has appeared at monthly intervals ever since. It is frequently known in the chess world as BCM.  
> – Sansa's [navy and cream jersey mini dress](https://vanda-production-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/2019/03/04/11/55/28/dd75c6c3-4436-4c19-badc-d80112c61494/2018KR3433-Quant-3-mindresses.jpg) is by Mary Quant, a trailblazing 60s designer who invented the mini skirt, naming it after her favourite car, the Mini Cooper. According to the V&A, "practical, affordable, crease-resistant and colourful, the jersey dress became a driving force in the democratisation of style."  
> – The painting Stannis/Stanislav is looking at is [The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger](https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/media/31457/n-1314-00-000260-hd.jpg?mode=max&width=1500&height=1080) (1533). As well as being a double portrait, the painting contains a still life of several meticulously rendered objects, the meaning of which is the cause of much debate. It also incorporates a much-cited example of anamorphosis (the skull) in the painting. It is a permanent part of the collection at the National Gallery in London.  
> – The chair in Sansa's hotel room is an [Eames Lounge chair](https://a.1stdibscdn.com/cms/CMS_GENERIC_IMAGE/1583862362_1b5nl/eames-lounge-chair.jpg) (plus ottoman), an iconic design that now epitomises the "sexy midcentury executive style, masculinity, and comfort," according to gq. The most collectible models are vintage rosewood.  
> – The description of Sansa's hair is based on 60s English model, [Jean Shrimpton's.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/Jean_Shrimpton_%281965%29.jpg/1024px-Jean_Shrimpton_%281965%29.jpg)  
> – The dress Sansa wears for her match against Stannis/Stanislav is based on this [green and white houndstooth set.](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/hbz-1960s-fashion-1960s-gettyimages-117288033-1498062743.jpg?crop=1xw:1xh;center,top&resize=980:*)  
> – Stannis/Stanislav probably looks something a bit [like this](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b2/2c/d8/b22cd8a43e72edc7aff90e06e84d3135.jpg) or [this](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/39/9e/03/399e0328cd58e75b3f857c6eec934bc3.jpg) in his black suit.  
> – The lyrics in the final section are from [ 'Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)',](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEFa4ztm9P0) the Nancy Sinatra version, recorded in 1966 for her album How Does That Grab You?
> 
> There's probably some other notes I could add, but I'll leave it at that I think...Comments, as always, are very much appreciated!
> 
> Cappy x


End file.
